Why You Should Never Upload a Video to WordPress

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Last updated Jul 10, 2019

Images, audio, and video make the web rich. Adding videos to your website certainly adds value to your content and increases the likelihood that your audiences would react to it. However, you would notice that most people using WordPress prefer to use a third-party video sharing service such as YouTube or Vimeo to upload their videos. One of our users asked us, if they can upload videos on their WordPress site. The answer is yes, but we don’t recommend you to do that. In this article, we will tell you why you should never upload a video to WordPress.

Upload vs. Embed (There is a Difference)

Before we tell you why you should never upload or host videos in WordPress, let us make sure that everyone understands that there is a difference between upload vs. embed.

Uploading or Hosting a video means that you will upload videos on your site like you would upload images on your site. This is the part that we are recommending against.

Embedding a video means that you upload a video on a third party site like Youtube, and then you can easily embed it in your blog posts. We strongly recommend folks to embed videos whenever they can.

Easy Sharing

Embedding a video in WordPress is easier. You can share a video uploaded on YouTube or other video sharing sites by just pasting the URL in your blog posts. It is also easier to manage a channel on YouTube. On the other hand it is not so simple in WordPress to create a video section separately from your images and other uploads. You can take your video uploaded on YouTube to social media and reach out to a wider audience. By uploading your video on YouTube and other video sharing sites, you make it easier for your viewers to share your video. One of our other website has over 11 million video views on Youtube.

Bandwidth

Uploading videos to your website will cost you bandwidth. Higher quality videos cost more bandwidth. If you allow users to embed it on their own websites, then the bandwidth gets multiplied each time the video is embedded else where. You will probably also have to add more plugins to manage and display your videos. These plugins will also increase your server load. If you are on shared web hosting, then chances are that your host will suspend your website and temporarily take it down.

Visibility and Traffic

According to Alexa rankings, YouTube is currently the world’s second most used search engine and the third most visited website. This alone compels many website owners to upload their videos to YouTube. Uploading a video on YouTube can bring more viewers than uploading it on your own website. Social networking features of YouTube and other video sharing websites can trigger viral popularity of your videos.

Video Quality Optimization

When you upload a video on sites like YouTube or Vimeo, they process each video for a better web experience. Viewers can choose whether they would like to watch your video in HD or on lower resolutions. Also these websites attempt to automatically detect a user’s internet connection and device type to play the video in a quality that is best for the viewer. If you upload your video on WordPress, then you are missing out on those optimizations and your video will display as it is, costing you more bandwidth and destroying user experience.

We hope that this article answered the question on why you should never upload or host a video on WordPress. If you have anything to add or have any questions, then feel free to leave a comment below.